Lifestyle photographer Denise Crew was approached by the producers of Netflix’s Queer Eye about a book they were producing that had a very quick turn-around. It typically takes 18 months to publish a book from start to finish and they needed to do this book in 6 months.

It's always refreshing to me to get behind the scenes and see how some cool images are made. Then, to realize that the only light source was a cell phone LED along with a few props, I realized that my studio needs a shopping trip.

The mall, removed. The cheesy decor, gone. The long lines, nope. Santa Sessions have become all-the-rage and photographers are making these shoots more of a high end experience. I witnessed a shoot first hand and to be honest, $10k seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s what I learned.

What would be your reaction if I told you to shoot a short film with a $10,000 cinema lens that has an abundance of optical defects? With a question put like that, it would certainly turn you away. What if I asked you about using an anamorphic lens instead?

The holidays months can bring extra leisure time, and there's nothing more rewarding than spending that free time on a challenging photography project. During last year's fall holidays I decided to turn my available energy into something creative and fun: a pet calendar for 2018.

It doesn’t always take expensive equipment to make big changes to the mood of a shot. Here are a couple ways I found to improve my portraits with a tool I didn’t so much buy as I found laying in the trash.

When taking a portrait of an artist, I find it is always a good idea to try and tell the story of the artist through the image. If someone is a musician, the aesthetic of a photograph should help you understand the type of music they play. Similarly, if someone is a drag queen – I try to photograph them in a way viewers can instantly ‘get’ their character. Join me behind the scenes in photographing Mango Sassi, a Drag Queen from Toronto, ON, and have a look into what it can take to create a collaborative image!

Knock on wood, but I walked outside this morning following the Halloween holiday and there were no smashed eggs, no toilet paper covering my trees, and about a hundred notifications on my phone from community members who had already downloaded the Halloween portraits I had taken for them.